Full moon, at our house, Jan 30, 2010

TV 2007

This is my final TV recap post. It was the first entry on my TV page (except for TV I have killed, which will come shortly. 2010 comments are in brackets.

Down below Soon, you’ll see the TV shows that I have killed. It was a sad day when two of my favorite shows were canceled for good last year. However, we move on. And so, this is our current [circa 2007] household lineup:

The Simpsons. Despite what the haters say, it’s still funny.

How I Met Your Mother. A solid sitcom, that has been very very good for three years now. A few rocky episodes this season, but still very funny. Suit up!

Aliens in America. A promising sitcom. We tuned in because Luke from the Gilmore Girls is on it, and we stayed because it’s pretty funny. It’s getting a little bogged down in “Raja undermining Justin and then Justin realizing he was wrong” plots, but it’s still very funny. Shame that the parents’ Green Bay accents keep popping up from time to time as if they were reminded they had to add them.

[I am rather sad that this show got canceled, but I think we saw Justin on something the other day]

Corner Gas. A favorite from Canada. Wonderful small town humor. With footage of beautiful Saskatchewan!

[It ended its complete run and was a treat till the end]

The Mercer Report. Another favorite from the North. Would that there were American commentators who had the chutzpah of Mr Mercer. (And, yes we love John Stewart, but there’s something so delightful about the Mercer Report…maybe it’s that he’s only on something like 20 weeks a year!)

[I do miss my Canadian satellite!]

Chuck/Reaper: How is it possible that two shows that are almost identical in premise made it on the air at the same time? They even have the same opening credit premise: a name tag that zooms in and fades out (although Chuck’s Nerd Herd opening credits are awesome). After the first few weeks, we were leaning towards Reaper, as we felt that the “Chuck longs for blonde girl and wants out of the CIA” thing was very tired. They seem to have given that up, so phew. But now we’re getting tired of Reaper’s “Sam pines for not-blonde-girl and wants out of the devil’s business.” We’d like to be able to morph these two shows into one:
From Chuck: Keep Chuck, and the two agents, lose the sister and Morgan, keep some of the Nerd Herd, and of course, keep the “Nerd Herd” which is an awesome name.
From Reaper: Lose Sam, keep Sock and Ben. Lose Andi, and definitely keep Ray Wise.
What we’d like is some kind of premise where the devil has implanted the CIA flashbacks to make Chuck solve CIA mysteries, or something like that.
Anyhow, this past week, both shows were fantastic, so maybe they’re hitting their strides now.

[It dawned on me today how much I was missing Reaper. As for Chuck, I’m glad they didn’t lose Morgan or Ellie, as those characters have fleshed out very nicely indeed]

America’s Next Top Model. We’re not proud. But in our defense, we do fast forward through all of the talking. TiVo was made for this show, we get through an episode in 20 minutes.

Project Runway/Canada: Even though I don’t care one whit about fashion, I enjoy watching people create things. The Canadian edition is good, except that Iman is just creepy, and she talks too slowly.

My Name is Earl: Really liked the first two seasons, but this new one with him in jail is pretty poor. The “list” made the show, and that Cops hourlong thing last week was really really bad.

[We gave up on it soon after this. Is it still on the air?]

30 Rock: I still think it’s overrated, but it is quite funny. Alec Baldwin gets better and better, but it’s a little too insider-NBC-product placement ha ha for me. I’d like to clean up the show and get rid of some characters that don’t work so well.

The Office: Best show on TV.

Scrubs: Had 5 great seasons. The whole JD gets a girl pregnant thing: not so great. But it is apparently going out gracefully, so we will continue to watch.

[Did I say gracefully? Sheesh.]

Robson Arms: A great Canadian drama, but I never know when it’s on.

[Got all three seasons on DVD. A wonderful drama/comedy.]

And some we gave up on:

The Big Bang Theory: Happy to see that kid from Roseanne again, but the first episode was pretty lame, despite the geek love, and when TiVo forget to tape episode two we took it as a sign.

[Um, yeah, we took it back. But in fairness, the pilot is nowhere near as good as the show became]

Carpoolers: We sort of liked the first episode, but I guess not enough. But hey, a Kid in the Hall was involved, so it can’t be that bad right?

[Holy cow, I forgot about this show. How many episodes even aired? According to IMDB, they actually did 13!]

Samantha Who? We love Christina Applegate, but jeez, this show started when, in November? Sorry, our schedule was set by then.

Little Mosque on the Prairie. Another nice show from Canada. I more or less enjoyed the first season, even though it was somewhat Three’s Company “wah waaaah”ish, but then I forgot all about it until I saw and ad for it last night. We may try to put it back into rotation. Maybe.

[The weird thing about not having Canadian satellite is I have no idea what happened to this show. I know it was quite popular, but is it still on? IMDB says they are finishing up season 4 right now. Good for them. ]

I think the sign of a good show is when the grand finale episode is not radically different from the other episodes. It shows confidence in the show itself to not have to do gimmicks. I don’t now if it’s because I’m in the US, but whenever they had guests on the show, it didn’t seem like a ratings stunt (like having Oprah on). I don’t know if the HIP or the governor of Saskatchewan (is that who was on? he was quite funny) is going to be a huge ratings draw. I miss my bell expressvue.